Show Me - Chapter 1
Prompt fic for the same anon who asked for Downfall, who said, "I was intrigued when you mentioned Athos and Milady sparring together in your headcanon post- may I request a fic of that scenario?". This owes to elements of headcanon and character development from Never and Always, though the closest it gets to that fic is an alternate universe - can you AU your own AU? XD
She's watched him fight before, both in earnest and sparring with other musketeers at the garrison, and for all that she may dismiss it aloud as overly honourable or even sometimes as dancing, that doesn't mean she won't admit (secretly though, never aloud) that he's damned good or that she doesn't enjoy watching him at it. It's clear that he takes pleasure in the act, revels in the test of skill, wits and bodies and blades, approaches it with a focussed intensity she remembers all too well –
It shouldn't make her breath hitch and her pulse speed – or it should, perhaps, but from adrenaline rather than a different and yet equally base emotion. And yet it does, precisely because she remembers that intense, unwavering focus, remembers what happened when he turned it on her, knows the narrowed intensity of his eyes and the satisfied curve of his mouth from a dance just as primal but wholly different.
The reaction unsettles her, at first. She's known, since the day she'd realised he'd unwittingly worked through her defences and made a home in her heart, that he was and will ever be her weakness, and to be reminded of it in such a physical and immediate way makes her want to lash out. When she does, though, deriding what he does as the kind of honourable idiocy that'll get him killed someday (and oh, that's a very real fear that she doesn't want to even consider, because she knew that reality for a brief heartstopping period and does not think she could stand that world again), he looks at her with stormcloud eyes and snaps back, "Then show me."
And so they come to this: in the shadows of the palace gardens, between the outer wall and an overgrown section rarely tended and more rarely frequented, blunted practise blades in hand, circling, testing, assessing. Their eyes are locked – eyes, after all, betray as little else can do on this field – their paces matched, and she thinks suddenly that this is intimate in an all too familiar fashion after all. Here, too, one body echoes the other, movement and breath and the pulse of blood all driven by the interplay.
He feints first, a testing thrust that takes advantage of his sword's longer reach, and she skitters back, out of the way. She's never fought fair, even (especially) as a child struggling to survive, and isn't about to start now, and so she has no qualms about giving ground to an ultimate gain. But he – he was raised to noble (stupid) ideals, and even if he's seen some of the darkness the world has to offer, he still persists in trying to hew to that line, and she hates him as much as she loves him for that misguided, misplaced notion.
He engages and she withdraws and he pursues, and this continues until she changes tactics abruptly, moves in rather than back when he next attacks, darts inside his guard to bring her knife up to his throat. He blocks at the very last instant, just manages to get his main gauche between, and for a moment they're pressed flush against each other, breathing the same air. She feels (or imagines she can, through all the layers of their clothes) his heart echoing the staccato beat of her own. (It's not the exertion making her pulse race, not this early – is that true for him too?)
She withdraws before he can trap her, moves back with a faintly disapproving sound. "Not paying attention will get you killed, captain," she taunts as she flips the blade in her grip, settles it more securely.
He only huffs faintly in response, but when his eyes find hers there's a fire there that wasn't present at the start – a fire that's different from the one she's seen in him when he's had a good spar at the garrison. This one she knows from days of summer sunlight and total abandon, days when they would come together at the flimsiest of pretexts, so lost in each other that the world could have burned down around them and they'd not have noticed. (This one she knows, and it makes her all too aware of how long it's been since she's had more of him than a kiss, than even one of those, and how much she wants. All the times she's watched him sparring before suddenly feel like the most voyeuristic bit of foreplay she's indulged in.)
But he's moving for her again, and it's in earnest now, as if before was just testing her measure, and she foregoes conscious thought in favour of just reacting, for the uncomplicated pleasure of the blood surging in her veins, adrenaline and exertion and the poetry of him, the fluid economy of his movements in this steel-limned duet. She can understand now why the others call him the best swordsman in France, in a way different from what she learned observing at a distance.
Back and forth, circling around – it's different fighting a swordsman in the open, and the longer it goes on the more she vows to avoid ever having to do this in reality. It would be different there anyway, but guns have no more place in a spar than the poisons and other assassin's tools she sometimes uses, and he has her at a distinct disadvantage. Was this a fight in truth she'd have fled by now, or scored him with some small poisoned blade and left him to die, but here it's just her and her dagger against an adversary that outmatches her in reach and strength, and instead she taunts, flits in and out, watches that fire blaze hotter as she deploys the tricks a restricted arsenal permits her and delights in this for what it is.
He scores a touch, then she does, hits that might have been significant in reality, but they're pulling blows and the agreement was that this ends when one or the other yields, and the further they go the less likely she thinks that'll be. They're both enjoying this far too much to want to stop, though perhaps they might be persuaded if –
His blade catches at her wrist, slews sideways, flips the dagger from her grip in a moment of distraction. It's his turn to grin at her, an expression of feral triumph, and she laughs despite herself and turns the tables, drawing her second blade from the folds of her skirts and rushing him, striking – low, high, a flurry meant to disorient – manages to rid him of his main gauche in the process. It's a success that proves her undoing, as he uses his freed hand to bind her up, catches her blade arm, twists it to pin her against him, and they're close again, so close, and suddenly the wall's behind her, cool against fevered skin, in contrast to the heat of his mouth as it crushes against hers, and god, she could sink into this so easily, but she's not about to give up and yield and so she bites, teeth closing on his lip harder than she might otherwise –
"Damn you, woman!" he roars, yanking free and shoving her away. As furious as the words are the heat in his eyes is blazing now, the fire rising and the storm threatening to break any moment, and she knows it's not just anger – knows it's mostly not, after that moment pressed together. "I did warn you I wouldn't play fair," is all she says though, as she licks the blood off her mouth and smirks. This is turning out to be far more interesting than she'd imagined possible.
(And then things got hot and dirty up against the wall THE END. XD;; )
As always, you can find me on Tumblr as myalchod.